It’s the mission of archaeology to understand the causes and effects of history. Doing so begins with recognizing that history does not exist solely or even primarily in written words. In fact, most history is never written down. It is still in the ground.
The job of archaeologists everywhere, and the Illinois State Archaeological Survey in particular, begins with locating history by identifying important cultural sites—both archaeological and architectural. If necessary, archaeologists then excavate what remains of a given site, finding everything from still-standing walls to the burned bits that remain from some family’s meal centuries ago. Charred food remains can last for many millennia.
Archaeologists will even dig up privies to sample the flotsam and jetsam that people tossed or lost down in them. With enough samples, patterns emerge from the debris, patterns that suggest how history unfolded in some location. You’d be surprised what can be found at the bottom of a privy.
Unfortunately, history yet-in-the-ground is threatened in major ways today. In Illinois, across the eastern United States, and throughout much of the world, the archaeological evidence of various histories—whether precolonial and Native American or modern and originating from any number of ethnic groups—is fragile. Unless buried by extraordinary natural processes, the remains of family homes, storage pits, cooking hearths, and more sit on or in the topsoil just inches beneath our feet. Of course, this is the topsoil that gets plowed by farmers today and, sometimes, bulldozed away to build our modern developments, homes, streets, and highways.
Besides uncontrolled development, the largest problem faced by archaeological sites in Illinois is erosion. The topsoil skin of the earth—Illinois’s farmlands—is eroding slowly but surely. Worse, erosion has been accelerating because of the changing precipitation patterns associated with modern climate change. And as topsoil erodes, so do the intact residues of archaeological sites, whether they are 100 or 10,000 years old. ISAS archaeologists see this as a slow-motion disaster.
That process of soil and archaeological site loss is serious because what we stand to lose is the ability to reconstruct history itself from the archaeological remains under our feet. Who did what where in the past? How did past families make a living, and how did social, geopolitical, or climatic events happening in the larger world change the course of their history? What else might we be able to learn about the past that could have meaning for the future?
In other parts of the world, there’s another problem even more immediate that erosion. It’s the destruction of archaeological sites by those who seek to profit from the artifacts recovered or to profit from the developments that in turn lay waste to archaeological sites. For example, the situation is dire in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban are systematically looting Bronze and Iron Age sites using bulldozers.
Likewise, in the heart of the well-known Maya civilization of Mexico, today’s archaeologists are “chasing around after caves and pyramids as they seemingly disappear from one day to the next….” In one case, some farmers in Belize are cutting, burning, and then bulldozing away the rainforest that has grown up around ancient Maya cities. These industrial farmers make no exceptions for stone pyramids and centuries old civic and ceremonial sites.
In another case, the Mexican government – in a move seemingly intended to link cultural heritage and tourism – is laying the tracks for a train that will slice through the Yucatan’s ancient cities of stone. However,
Tren Maya, or the Maya Train … has triggered an archaeological race across the peninsula like no other. The train is a colossal infrastructure project … [d]esigned to connect the region’s major tourist stops … [while] providing an infusion of jobs and economic growth to some of Mexico’s most impoverished rural areas, many primarily occupied by people of Indigenous descent.... [S]cientists have joined Indigenous leaders in decrying the environmental destruction that has accompanied Tren Maya’s construction. The rail line slices through the largest remaining tract of rainforest in the Americas and disrupts the region’s fragile underground caves. Some, including the International Rights of Nature Tribunal, have accused the government of ecocide.
In the U.S., laws exist that aim to preserve archaeological sites or mitigate the damage to them by infrastructure projects. But few understand just how much is being lost daily despite these laws, and the process of loss is accelerating. Even in Illinois, where there is on average one precolonial-era archaeological site for every 35 acres, thousands of acres are bulldozed every year for housing developments and chain stores. Archaeologists and preservationists struggle to keep up with the loss.
If we don’t course correct, there will be very little physical heritage left on large chunks of the Illinois landscape to claim or protect in the not-too-distant future. We at ISAS want to hold the line. We want to document and preserve the rich cultural legacies of all Illinoisians and our neighbors in the Midwest—Indigenous descendants and the progenies of immigrants alike. Our mission is to investigate, preserve, and interpret through archaeology and architectural history the cultural heritage of Illinois and beyond in the interests of local, regional, and global public needs and economic development. To accomplish this mission, we partner with public and private organizations as well as federal, state, tribal, and local governmental entities, and we disseminate archaeological and historical information to stakeholders and other public and professional audiences.